Mark Van Doren

Mark Van Doren
Born(1894-06-13)June 13, 1894
Hope, Illinois, U.S.
DiedDecember 10, 1972(1972-12-10) (aged 78)
Torrington, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation
EducationUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BA)
Columbia University (MA, PhD)
Notable worksShakespeare (1939)
A Liberal Education (1943)
Notable awardsPulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1940 for Collected Poems 1922–1938
Academy of American Poets' Fellowship (1967)
SpouseDorothy Van Doren
Children2, including Charles Van Doren
RelativesCarl Van Doren (brother)
Adam Van Doren (grandson)

Mark Van Doren (June 13, 1894 – December 10, 1972) was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–1928), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.[1]

Amongst his notable works, many published in The Kenyon Review,[2] are a collaboration with brother Carl Van Doren, American and British Literature since 1890 (1939); critical studies, The Poetry of John Dryden (1920), Shakespeare (1939), The Noble Voice (1945) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1949); collections of poems including Jonathan Gentry (1931); stories; and the verse play The Last Days of Lincoln (1959). A notable student, later a colleague, was Lionel Trilling. David Lehman writes that "Though the differences between them were many – Trilling struck some as patrician in demeanor where Van Doren seemed ever the populist – the two great professors inspired a rare filial devotion in generations of Columbia students. It was inevitably either Mark Van Doren or Lionel Trilling who was the favorite professor of students with a literary vocation, and in time Columbia would name its highest teaching accolade after Van Doren and its major award for scholarship after Trilling."[3] He won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Collected Poems 1922–1938.

  1. ^ Mark Van Doren Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ^ "History" Archived December 30, 2008, at the Wayback Machine the Kenyon Review Web site, accessed January 26, 2007
  3. ^ Lehman, David (September 2005). "Mark Van Doren and Shakespeare". Columbia College Today.